Can you elaborate on this? Were you interviewing specifically for L5 roles? I wonder if years of experience or even achievements can be used against a candidate by raising the bar so to speak. Maybe one is a L5 at their current company but only a L4 elsewhere. As long as you can contribute at whatever level is appropriate for the given company I don't think it should be held against the candidate.
A year later a different recruiter from the same company contacted me again to ask me to re-interview. Then he contacted the recruiter from one year ago to see if I had to retake the initial phone interview, or go directly on site. After discussing with her, he told me that they don't have currently an L5 position open, and that he would be contact me again in a few months (which he didn't).
Unless I'm missing some details, this actually sounds like age discrimination.
Wouldn't it be the same as not hiring a 30-year-old basketball player who is performing at the same level as a 25-year-old player?
I don't see how this could be legal, even in an employer-friendly a nation as the U.S.
Sure, there are some outlier candidates who enter the field later in life as a second career. But for the overwhelming majority of candidates, "years of experience" is a very thin proxy for "age". I can understand requiring a minimum YOE, but there's no reasonable justification for a maximum.
Just because someone with many years of experience levels lower than typical doesn’t make them a bad person or even a bad hire. But it does make them a more risky candidate to hire (more likely to be "middle of the pack"; less likely to be "undiscovered superstar"), and so some companies choose to pass.
(I’m arguing that this is rational, not that it’s right, fair, or morally sound.)
If you don't have that endless stream, you are more likely choosing between "this candidate" against "no candidate" vs "this candidate" against "the next qualified candidate".
Failing to have grown skills and project scope to L5 level after extensive time in the industry could be interpreted by some as poor motivation or career growth planning - their thinking is that if you've been doing the same thing for years elsewhere without growing, you'll tend to be trying to do the same things for years there without growing.
The projects I've worked on in my career haven't been considered in the interview process. They just expected better results on their standardized interviews (algo + system design) compared to a more junior candidate. I don't think the question they ask correlate at all with candidate experience, even for the system design part.
But overall, I think it's an imperfect but fair process.
An individual might be trying to get into a FAANG in order to get experience with technically complex projects of a certain scope. A lot of roles out here at non tech or smaller firms are just building and maintaining simple CRUD interfaces. The business domain may be complicated but the tech execution is probably not. I thought the algo gauntlet was a equalizer where exceptional coders could clear the bar regardless of education or work history.
From an interview point of view, they're probably looking for examples of that independence and self-motivation (ie, not just doing what someone told you to do), and also the step beyond just writing the code towards more holistic ownership (things like "created a new test harness along the way", "did a survey of developers", "made sure there was a killswitch", "created a rollout strategy", "convinced another engineer to share review and support responsibilities").
Edit: I've now found levels.fyi - these are Google's internal progression levels.
It can be, and I've seen it. In general there is an assumption that people who come in at too low a level relative to their experience won't be happy and won't stay, so it's not a good idea to hire them.
Obviously some people are exceptions, but hiring managers will err on the side of caution.
https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/360829/ama...
Mostly algorithms and system design interviews. I thought I did pretty well (something like 3 very good interviews, 1 good, and 1 ok). In both cases, the conclusion was that my results were good enough for an L4 position, but they wouldn't hire me for less than L5. (Why not, I'd be happy as an L4...). Also, I found the interview process pretty random and arbitrary. One company praised my algorithmic skills, while the other said that I did very well on system design). They encouraged me to re-apply.
I'm not concerned about the actual job, I don't feel less capable than my 30 year old self. I'm more knowledgeable, and I have more experience with human interactions.
The interviewers all told me that you don't have to be a manager if you don't want to, and that good developers were always valued, regardless of their age. I don't know how much of this is true though. I can't help thinking that my age had played against me in the final decision.
The interview process is a pain. It's very random, it takes a lot of time preparing (some people literally spend months working full time). The things they ask you have very little value besides getting you a job. At least, it's kind of fun to work on these leetcode problems, but after 200 hundred variations of BST and dynamic programming exercices it starts to get old. Also, if you already have a demanding job (and maybe a family), it's hard to find the time to practice.
If you spend enough time preparing AND if you aren't stressed out during the actual interview, I think you can pass with reasonable probability the algorithm interviews. I found system designs a little more random. My question wasn't in the "syllabus" they provided me. Also, as an older programmer, there may be many things that you knew a few years back. You're disadvantaged compared to a younger graduate.